How hoarding feeds what I make, though there are more hoards to be revealed

I got some questions about a book I showed on Instagram and here a few posts ago.  I made it ages ago and found it intimidating and so have only recently begun to work on the pages.

I painted paint sample brochures, the kind you get from hardware stores.  They are a variety of sizes and formats, but range from 8 inches by 8 inches to 9 inches by 12 inches or even bigger.  They are all either three or four folds, so open they are really large.  I painted them all with acrylics, with no real plan as to color or theme. I did it over about 3 or 4 days, so continuity was never a consideration.
I bound them into a book with a really simple coptic stitch binding and used some cloth tape that was used to tie up a delivery to help hold them together. I just covered bookboard with some nice paper that I had saved (two hoarder savings in the cover alone!) for the cover, it has a snakeskin texture that you can feel.

Some pics might help here... to show that the trifold and quadrofold pages can be seen in several ways, depending on how they are folded. The interactions between pages is VERY interesting to consider in creating pages.

The right side page here is the same in each of the next two pics.  The left page is folded differently.

Here the furthest left side is folded behind the center page.

Here the page is folded over the center part of the page.

As you can see from the next picture, the pages are different sizes, so the edges do not line up, but I really like being able to see other pages behind the one I am working on at the time.

This is the only "page" I feel is sort of finished,

 and in the following closeups you can see the other interesting part about making pages from paint sample books.  Although I did lightly sand the pages if they were shiny, the grid from the sample chips is still visible.  In some places I covered it with collage or something else, in others I used it.  I am still playing with how this works overall.

Left side:

Center:

Right side:

Finally... man this post got long.... I have the "red page" I am working on, and it is in pause mode while I think about it some more. I often work on more than one page at a time, so I thought I would show you my next "start" ...

 I have had this picture since the 1980's. Not sure exactly when I shot it.  It is of one of my friend who is also a photography nut.   I cropped it, played with the contrast, and printed it on my laser printer.  Then I did an image transfer using matte gel medium to a page in the journal.  It is on the "first side"  of a trifold page. so there is a totally different page on the left and the page could open further on the right. This page also has lots of semi hidden paint samples on it.  We shall see what happens next..

Number 3 in the I am a Hoarder series...

I used to print black and white photos in a rental darkroom down on 3rd Street in Manhattan.  It was behind an art gallery, and when the gallery wasn't open you could rent the darkroom.  You could go back there and lock yourself in, turn on the radio and work as long as you wanted.  It was a little slice of heaven.  These are the negatives and many of the prints I made back there.  I want to use them again.  I haven't shot film in ages, but every time I look through these notebooks I want to break out the film cameras and start again.

One story about the darkroom.  I came out one evening, having been in there for hours, to find the street full of police.  I asked what was going on, after I explained where I had come from, since the gallery was closed and dark.  They said that the Hell's Angels had a clubhouse at the other end of the street and they were having a book signing.

After I processed that I asked about the heavy police presence for a book signing in a place not well known to house bigtime readers?   The police said that it was unusual, but the last time they had a book signing there was a shooting, so they were there just as deterrence.

I went home.. New York, the East Side in the 1980's you gotta love it.